Susanne Kaiser on DDD, Wardley Mapping, & Team Topologies

"Wes Reisz: Great. There's so many things that are in software. What made you decide to bring these three things together to kind of a story?

Susanne Kaiser: Yes. So for me, the combination of Wardley Mapping, Domain-Driven Design and team topologies evolved naturally over time, but it was at its core driven by system thinking. So, Dr. Russell Ackoff, one of the pioneers of the system thinking movement, he stated that a system is more than the sum of its parts. It's a product of their interaction. So the way parts fit together, that determines the performance of system, not on how they perform taken separately. So, and when we are building systems in general, we are faced with the challenges of building the right thing and building the thing right. Right? And building the right thing addresses effectiveness, and addresses questions such as how aligned is our solution to the users and business needs. Are we creating value for our customers? Have we understood the problem and do we share a common understanding and building the thing right?

Focuses on efficiencies, for example, efficiency of engineering practices, and it's not only crucial to generate value, but also being able to deliver that value. How fast can we deliver changes, and how fast and easy can we make a change effective and adapt to new circumstances. So, the one doesn't go without the other, but as Dr. Russell Ackoff pointed out doing the wrong thing right is not nearly as good as doing the right thing wrong. So, by considering the whole, and having effectiveness and efficiency in mind to build the right thing right, that we need a kind of like holistic perspective to build adaptive systems. One approach out of many is combining these three perspectives of business strategy with Wardley Mapping, software architecture, and design was Domain-Driven Design, and team organization was team topologies. So, in order to build and design and evolve adaptive socio-technical systems that are optimized for fast flow of change."

Susanne Kaiser on DDD, Wardley Mapping, & Team Topologies